I’m excited to share this X-Guide update, not only because it contains my favorite comic of all time, but because it’s my first ever “normal” guide update! Updated today, it’s my Guide to Excalibur – including a complete Excalibur Reading Order and links to read every physical and digital collection of Excalibur ever released!
The Guide to Excalibur was the first 2010s guide that I rebuilt to my new style and standard in 2021, which means this is the first routine maintenance update I’ve done so far this decade.
Over the past year, Excalibur wrapped up its collection of the 2019 Tini Howard & Marcus To run in both trade paperback and oversize hardcover. Howard continued some characters and themes of that title into Knights of X (2022) with artist Bob Quinn, which was just five issues and collected in a single trade paperback.
(Howard is still writing Betsy Braddock, but now she has graduated to her own Captain Britain title!)
When it comes to past Excalibur collections, the two years since my last update brought us two major releases – plus some big news in the last month.
First, the two major releases.
Marvel released a second Excalibur (1988) omnibus in February 2022, which was effectively “Excalibur by Alan Davis,” since it collects his solo run on the title in its entirety through issue #67. This material has been collected previously in color, but all but a handful of issues have never before been collected in oversize hardcover.
Then, in March 2022, Marvel collected beyond Excalibur (1988) #103 for the first time ever in Excalibur Epic Collection Vol 8: The Battle for Britain. The Epic Collection also contains Excalibur’s trio of one-shots and mini-series from that period – a Colossus one-shot, Kitty Pryde’s SHIELD mini-series, and the New Mutants: Truth or Death mini-series (featuring Wolfsbane, who was a cast member at that time).
Now for the big news (at least, it’s big to me):
Marvel has announced they are collecting for the first time not only the final issues of Excalibur (1988), but also the previously uncollected Excalibur (2001) #1-4 in Excalibur Epic Collection Vol 9: You Are Cordially Invited! This book has yet to be solicited, but the contents have been confirmed by my friend & colleague Omar at Near Mint Condition (with special guest Kurtis from the Epic Marvel Podcast!).
I’ll be back in a few weeks with a full-on “Math & Maps” look at where that leaves Excalibur’s collected status, but here’s a spoiler: as of Epic Collection Vol 9 every single issue of Excalibur will have been collected in color at least one time (except, as astute commenter Amanda just pointed out, the pair of annuals)!
Of course, there’s a lot more mathing and mapping to do from there, but it’s an exciting place to start. If you want to find where every issue of Excalibur is collected and how to put it all in reading order, visit my Guide to Excalibur today!
As you may have noticed, I’m making slow and steady progress through updating all of my X-Men guides to ensure their reading order is complete and they list every collected edition through the present day. Do you have a favorite X-Guide you want to see me update next? Or, are you jonesing for an update to one of my 100s of other comic book guides? Let me know in the comments below! I create these guides for you, and your comments heavily influence my priorities.
Will Excalibur Annual #1 and #2 be collected?
A great point – I just updated the post to reflect that the annuals are not yet collected and I’ll be sure the guide reflects that as well.
I’d expect to see both of them in Epic Collections, whereas they were previously abandoned by the Davis and Ellis Visionaries collections since they didn’t write them.
Annual 1 occurs during #66, but it was released slightly after so it’s not in the Davis Omnibus. It could wind up at the tail end of whatever Epic collects the Omni material, or in the next Epic. Annual 1 directly follows Phalanx Covenant and fits before Ellis’s first issue.
Thanks for the heads up! The Epic Collection just skipped vols 5, 6, 7 and went straight from 4 to 8 and now 9, so that’s why I got confused! I was under the impression all of them were released already.
Nope – the Epics are designed to be released out of order. There’s a clear influence of getting some Epics out AHEAD of omnibuses, while they hold back others to release afterward. I think it has to do with how hot the market is for a given book as well as if the art still needs to be remastered for collection.
Hi, do you know what is going to happen with Epic Collection 5, 6 & 7 ?
Jose, Epics are released in an unpredictable order. I suspect they were holding Vol. 5 to sell more of the Vol. 2 omnibus, and 6 has some material that has not yet been digitized. They have kept up a steady page of one Epic per year in this line with only one skip year, so I suspect we’ll see these wrap up in 2024-2026.